R.C. Mechelen
Belgian basketball club

Racing Club Mechelen, or Racing Club Malines, was a Belgian professional basketball club from the city of Mechelen, Belgium. It was the men's basketball section of K.R.C. Mechelen. For sponsorship reasons, the club was also known as Maes Pils from the 1970s until the 1990s.
History
Founded in the 1940, the basketball section of KRC Mechelen obtained the number 71. The greatest period of the club was in the second part of the 20th century competing against other powerful clubs like RC Mechelen, Antwerpse BC and Bus Fruit Lier from the largest cities of the Antwerp Province.
From the end of the 1960s until the end of the 1970s, RC Mechelen was always present as main rivals to the Standard BC Liège club and the Brussels side Fresh Air Basketball , BC Oostende in the 1980s, and Spirou Basket Club in the 1990s.
In total, the club won 24 Trophies between 1964 and 1994: 15 Belgian Championships and 9 Belgian Cups. Maes Pils also reached the final of the Korać Cup in 1973 where they were beaten by Italian side Pallacanestro Cantù.
R.C. Mechelen folded and merged with Sobabee to create Racing Basket Antwerpen, in 1995. Until it was dissolved, the club's senior team was the most successful Belgian basketball club, after having won a total of 15 Belgian national championships, 9 Belgian Cups, and 5 Belgian SuperCups.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “R.C. Mechelen” as belgian basketball club. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as belgian basketball club. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2518827. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1964, 1994 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “R.C. Mechelen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.